Monday, April 26, 2010

Citation du jour

“The truth,” Mr. Diouf said the other morning, “is that the future of the French language is now in Africa.” There and elsewhere, from Belgium to Benin, Lebanon to St. Lucia, the Seychelles to Switzerland, Togo to Tunisia, French is just one among several languages, sometimes, as in Cameroon, one among hundreds of them. This means that for writers from these places French is a choice, not necessarily signifying fealty, political, cultural or otherwise, to France. Or as Mr. Diouf put it: “The more we have financial, military and economic globalization, the more we find common cultural references and common values, which include diversity. And diversity, not uniformity, is the real result of globalization.”

Pardon My French

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